The True Work of Homemaking; The Beauty + Toll of Moving; How I Set Up a Meal Plan

Creating a space for each of us to dive deeper in relationship with Christ

In the morning, I pour myself a cup of coffee. Sometimes I am in a good mental state where I can pray the rosary all in one go, if not I usually still try to pray at least a decade before starting my day. Then at some point I pick up my phone to see what the world has been doing while I’ve been asleep. A hop, skip and a jump then I’m on Facebook or Instagram checking out the latest. It’s a habit I’ve been trying to improve over the past few months - some days I’m better than others.

Before long images of beautifully dressed women, hair up, dance across my screen with mantras about homemaking. Some of them are truly inspiring and give me a good gut check, others leave me feeling inadequate, as if I’m not doing enough, prettily enough, womanly enough.

All these images, these women, sharing what homemaking is about got me thinking.

Is homemaking really about wearing certain clothes? Making certain foods? Praying certain prayers? Owning certain items? Must my home always be immaculate? Always handsomely decorated?

Or is homemaking more about the condition of the heart - the caregiver’s and the cared for? Is it more about grace, love, faith, and struggle? Is it more about the mess of life being enveloped in the beauty of living?

You see, I believe homemaking is about welcoming weary souls in and taking care to revive them. It is about gently speaking words of Truth and Wisdom within these walls we call home. It is about discipleship - loving and shepherding the souls who walk through our door with a warm drink and a smile.

The home can be fashioned into an upper room where it, while cared for fully and responsibly, is also wide open to the Holy Spirit. Where this Spirit of Wisdom and Truth can descend upon us warming our chilled hearts, sowing the seeds of our faith before we step back out into the dark world. The home can be a sanctuary that homemakers can cultivate to encounter the Living God, in the community of family and friends.

Homemaking can be a beautiful act and can indeed make the home lovely, comfortable, and welcoming but it is more about making our homes a living tool for conforming our children and even ourselves to the will of God.

To me this is the true work of homemaking - to put at God’s disposal all of our home making abilities, as refined or not as they are, and to invite Him into the messy, beautiful work of shaping souls under our care whether that is for an evening or for a childhood and beyond.

3 ways to Turn Your Home into an Upper Room:

• Scripture - Find a Catholic Children’s Bible and read one story a night with the kids, and connect it to a brief scripture passage from your Bible. Diving into the story of our salvation, talking about God’s love for us, with our kids has changed their views of God and ours. It has been so meaningful!

  Our favorite is the Great Adventure Kid’s Catholic Bible - beautiful and engaging stories.

• Pray - At meals, when the day is rough, while driving, when cooking, doing chores, when you first wake, while you drink your coffee. You get it… But make sure your kids see you pray and hear you pray. Consider inviting them into prayer with you. Modeling prayer, even for 5 minutes, is one of the best ways to shape the heart of our homes.

• Rest - This one is tough in our society today. When being busy is perceived as synonymous with “important” being busy has become the “it” status. Yet, if we are always running - to work, sports, events, activities - we risk never pausing to rest and be still in the presence of God. “Be still, and know that I am God.” Psalms 46:10

  Be still.

  Rest.

  It will do so much for our mind, body and souls in the service of the Lord.

- AMDG

The Beauty & Toll of Moving

My family has moved 5 times in the last 11 years. It’s been a lot. There has been excitement, exhaustion, the thrill of what is to come and the heartbreak of saying goodbye.

I know without a doubt I wouldn’t be who I am today if we hadn’t moved so often. I wouldn’t be as outgoing, or confident in my own abilities. Nothing really forces you to be confident like living through a move with a 6 yr old who couldn’t walk well, a 4 yr old who just broke her leg the night before your move and an infant, but I digress.

Moving is an integral part of my adulthood up to this point. It’s been incredible to see God moving ahead of my family carefully laying foundations that I am still reflecting on years later, in awe of His wisdom. The people we have met along the way have become some of my dearest friends, people who showed me the beauty of letting go, the humility of being a servant to my family in our greatest need, the joy of stepping out in adventure seeing where the road would take us. In so many instances I can see the hand of God working in these people and how they loved on my family, how they loved on me. I’m not convinced I would have seen Him moving in such profound ways had we not moved and met these incredible individuals.

The toll of course is the exhaustion of picking up and finding a new place to set down roots. The emotional exhaustion of deciding who do you talk to? How will I find my people yet again? Who do I keep in touch with? The energy it takes to put yourself out there again and again is immense and even my extroverted husband has been feeling the strain this last move. The mentally taxing working of unpacking and putting Every. Single. Thing. In it’s proper place and space. The physical exhausting of doing. Always going, unpacking, sorting, cleaning, lifting, shuffling, and sorting again.

This is nothing compared to saying goodbye to the people who in such a short time, usually two years or less for us, have left you changed in immeasurable - beautiful - ways. That challenging moment when things are still normal but everyone knows you’re about to leave. It’s a longing for that moment to never come but everyone is aware it must and it does. Like the slow pull of a band aid that has finished its job admirably, so too must the close proximity of friendship be pulled, and stretched, though hopefully not discarded. I always find myself asking “will it last?” through the distance and time. Some do and some don’t.

Another toll.

This last move, what Joe and I have dubbed “our final move” has underscored in unexpected ways the beauty and toll of moving. We know deeply that God meant for this move to happen, and while it has been painful to say goodbye, the incredible place we have landed, is a testament to God’s faithfulness.

I’ll spend another newsletter sharing answered prayers, years of them, that have led us here. Little bread crumbs if you will that only now am I starting to grasp the bigger picture.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from all these moves, boxes, and sore backs is not how hard restarting can be but the stunning way in which God goes before us. How even when we are suffering, and can’t understand why we are experiencing what we are, whether that is a move or something even heavier, that He is moving, working, laying foundations for our good. Romans 8:28. All we have to do is give Him our “yes” our Fiat. He never said the roads we travel will be easy, but He did say “I am with you always, to the end of the age” Matthew 28:20.

Meal Planning by the Seat of My Pants

So now you know just how often my family has moved.

In all the years that we’ve moved, I became pretty efficient in how we would work down what food we had left with little waste and to build up our pantry again once we were settled. However, meal planning always seemed to be out of my reach. I thought it required getting into a certain rhythm, which meant not moving - obviously something we haven’t achieved yet!

After a friend recommended the 3-volume book set The Summa Domestica I decided to bite the bullet and get them. Sure enough, in Vol. 3, Leila Lawler dives into creating a meal plan and a lightbulb switched on. She recommends creating a master list of all your favorite dishes, your husband’s, your children’s. Then add to the list any restaurant dishes you loved - looking up an at home version, and any childhood favorites. I added in a meatless list as well since our family has chosen to follow the devotion of no meat on all Fridays in the year to remember that Jesus sacrificed His flesh for us on Good Friday. The best part about this method is I already had most of the recipes we added to our family master list, and I was familiar with them. Even the kids were on board because I would rotate in some of their favorite meals. It was a game changer!

From this master list I can create my weekly menu, and because I’m planning my menus ahead of time, I create my grocery list and tend to stick to it better - two birds, one stone!

One of my biggest challenges since we’ve moved to SC is our busy days have changed, so I’ve had to adjust. Tuesday - Thursday we are very busy with 2-hr long soccer practices, and our co-op.

Sample of my meal list:

Sunday (Palm Sunday) - White Chicken Chili w/ cornbread, garden salad

Monday - Chicken Carbonara and garden salad

Tuesday - Chicken salad sandwiches to-go, chips

Wednesday - Homemade pizzas w/ toppings (spinach, sliced onions, mushrooms, pepperoni, cheese, sauce.)

Thursday (Maundy Thursday) - Leftovers and PB&Js to-go

Friday (Good Friday - meatless & fasting) - Adults - Mujadara w/ caramelized onions and savory yogurt sauce. Kids - mac & cheese w/ veggies.

Saturday (Holy Saturday) - Roasted Chicken, roasted potatoes and asparagus, garden salad.

Books on my Nightstand

I’m one of those readers that usually has her nose is more than one book at a time. If a book is particularly interesting I might stick with it for a while and even finish it in one go instead of hopping between books. However, I find that a book has to match my mood. If I am in a restful mood, I enjoy reading fiction, if I am in a “get things done” mood, I typically pick up a book like The Summa Domestica, to inspire and glean ideas. Naturally, with writing about faith, I try to read one book from a saint a month, sometimes it takes a little longer though depending on life, the saint and how focused I am when reading.

Currently I am reading:

• An Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis De Sales. A surprisingly accessible book! If you’ve been intimidated by the thought of reading the saints, this would be a wonderful book to ease into the habit. I’m roughly 2/3 of the way through and have been so encouraged by St. Francis. This book may have been written in 1609 but his advice is as relevant today as ever. My favorite quote “Always give good heed to the Word of God, whether you hear or read it in private, or hearken to it when publicly preached: listen with attention and reverence; seek to profit by it, and do not let the precious words fall unheeded; receive them into your heart as a costly balsam; imitate the Blessed Virgin who ‘kept all the sayings’ concerning her Son ‘in her heart.’”

• Giving Your Words by Sally and Clay Clarkson. I’m nearly 1/2 of the way through this book and its been a light read is some ways. Sally and Clay do an excellent job of explaining why words matter in the home, how they matter and what words you can or should use. I could see this book being especially helpful for young families looking to build a faith-filled culture in the home but didn’t have a model from which to draw. This is great book in general if you are a parent looking to revisit your verbal style, and looking for ideas and inspiration to continue the holy work of discipling your children in your home.

• Baptism of Fire by Andrzej Sapkowski. I’m a sucker for Fantasy. Lord of the Rings is probably my all time favorite and I loved that trilogy before I even knew J.R.R. Tolkien was Catholic. I loved it so much I began to learn the elven language he created. Anyway, I always like to read a good, light book that’s fun. The Witcher series is that, however it definitely has themes that are adult, and not always in alignment with Church teaching. Personally, I find the main character’s life journey as one of the last of his kind, in the dark world of the Witcher to be compelling, and thought provoking.

Favorite Things

First, I would love your help naming this section of the newsletter. I may write but I am horrible at naming things! Here I am going to share a few of my favorite things this month.

• Libraries! Can we talk about how amazing they truly are? About once a week I have been taking the kids, and they each have their own reusable grocery bag they can put new books in, they can only get as many books as their age. It has saved us so much money and also sparked the joy of reading new kinds of genres. If you haven’t visited your library lately, do, its so much fun!

• It may be TMI, but a friend recommended menstrual cups to me recently and I begrudgingly decided to try one after all her raving. She basically said “you HAVE to try it. Its been life changing!!” So I did. Never did I think a feminine product would make all the difference during that time of month but let me tell you…wow! I can sleep in it, no leaks, it’s painless, it doesn’t irritate my skin and it is so easy to clean and re-use. Honestly I’m not sure where it has been but at 36 I’m never going back!! I have tried the Cora Menstrual Cup and I am sold!

• Substack. Naturally I have to include this in my first true newsletter. If you have been feeling tired, annoyed or worn out by social media, having other’s thoughts and opinions shoved show up in your feed or just want to reduce noise without losing touch completely you should consider signing onto Substack and finding writers, like me. There is a whole community here that has long and short form writing, and podcasts. It’s not relying on an algorithm either, so you won’t miss it unless you don’t subscribe. What a beautiful thought!

*** Unless otherwise stated all the links in this newsletter are unaffiliated. I’m just sharing what I love and has worked for me, hoping it will bless you as well***